The Shapiro Files

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

It's True: I'm Returning to the Stage

For the first time in seven years, I'm returning to the stage to act in a play, a romantic comedy from the 80s called Crossing Delancey. It was later adapted into a movie staring Amy Irving, so it's very possible many of you might know it. I play Sam, the owner of a pickle shop and prototypical "nice guy" who has his eyes on Izzy, the play's protagonist. Izzy, however, is more interested in Tyler, the self-absorbed author that frequently visits the bookstore where she works. So does Izzy end up with nice-guy Sam or schmucky Tyler? You'll have to come see it to find out.

While all of the above sounds like your typical romantic comedy, what makes this play stand out from standard rom-com fare is its New York Lower-East Side setting and characters, which allows for a deeper exploration into ethnic identity, tradition, and the old-world vs. new-world generational divide. But most of all, it's very funny and very romantic. The perfect play for a date night or for a night out with friends!

The show runs January 27 through Feburary 19. You can get more details and ticket information at Tabard Theatre's website.

Sunday, September 04, 2011

Getting Healthy, Losing Weight (Mostly on Purpose)

Since so many people have been asking, I'm going to come clean and admit that I've lost just over 35 pounds over the past five months. Yes, it was intentional--well, mostly intentional. But I'll get to the "mostly" part in a little bit. First, I'll start at the beginning.

As I entered my 30s, I experienced an all-too-common slowing down of my once overcharged metabolism due in no small part to a more sedentary life of working full-time in a high tech setting. Things got even worse when I became a parent six years ago. When you have kids, it's not unusual to allow your health to take a backseat to the parenting concerns that tend to monopolize all your waking hours. Life had become more stressful than ever, I was overeating, and I certainly wasn't about to take any of my rare free time to go to the gym. As a consequence of all this, I found myself about 15 pounds above the normal weight range for my height. Even worse, I felt sluggish and not pleased with the way I was looking.

I finally woke up one morning in March and decided that after years of Marcie regularly nudging me to start exercising, I would finally heed her advice. The first thing I did was ignore fad diets and programs promoted by fitness gurus. I've always liked doing things in my own way. That's just the way I'm wired. Instead, I did my own research and came up with a very balanced workout/dietary plan that I hoped to be sustainable and healthy. As it turns out, this plan proved to be so effective that I found myself losing weight far quicker than I would have ever expected. I originally figured that I might lose a pound or two a week and reach my goal of losing 20 pounds within about three months. I ended up doing it in under two. And no, I didn't starve myself--quiet the opposite, actually.

Five months later, I'm now more than 35 pounds less than where I started and have more energy than I've had in years. That's the good news. But if that number 35 looks a little troubling, that's because I did experience a bit of a detour along the way, which as already promised, I'll get to shortly. But first, since so many people have been asking me how exactly I managed to lose the weight and improve my overall health, I thought I'd share my whole regimen here. Of course, what worked for me may not necessarily work for others. Still, maybe something from my experiences could be helpful to someone interested in such things.

Exercise + Diet = The Magical (Albeit Obvious) Combination

My whole routine has been predicated on the most basic of fitness tenants: Sustainable weight loss can only be achieved by a combination of healthier eating and exercise. It's that simple. Fad diets only get you temporary results. Once your metabolism catches up with whatever tricks you're playing on it, you'll stop losing pounds and will likely start gaining them right back. The key is you absolutely have to exercise as well. In fact, in the balance between diet and exercise, I'd say exercise is, by far, the more important of the two. It's also the most difficult and time consuming.

And let me tell you, I hate exercising. I hate the sweating, I hate the heavy breathing, and I hate the rapidly pounding heartbeat. I also find it incredibly tedious. But that's where discipline comes in. Being a grown-up is all about doing things I don't like doing and so this is just one of those things. Plus it at least has a very tangible impact on my well being.

The other consideration is how much time is takes up. The fact is, I would have never been able to achieve my fitness goals without Marcie's selfless support. In particular, she has had to go solo with the kids even more than usual in order to give me the time I need for going to the gym. I know it's not easy. In fact, if I had to add one other variable to the Exercise + Diet equation, it would have to be the support of a loved one. I'm indeed more fortunate than I can say that I have this in spades.

The Fitness Plan

I go to the gym three times a week--two days immediately after work and one weekend day. I always start off with aerobic exercise, spending around 40 minutes on a treadmill. I do a five-minute warmup, at least 30 minutes at full speed with gradually increasing incline, and 5-10 minutes cool down. I always have something loaded up on my iPod to listen to, as the time on the treadmill would otherwise feel interminable. By the end of the session, I'm usually red-faced and drenched in perspiration and wishing I don't run into people who know me. I'm not a pretty sight.

I next go to the weight training area where I do chest presses, shoulder presses, dumbbell curls, and a bunch of other things whose names I don't know. I'm always trying to gradually increase the weights each few weeks to help build up more strength. I do all this not only for strength and flexibility, but because more muscle mass equals higher metabolic rate, which is helpful for sustained weight loss.

Finally, I do about 10 minutes of mat work, which includes several different types of crunches, sit-ups, pushups, and stretches.

The Diet

I take a very common sense approach to my diet. I'm not into large-scale eliminations, tracking dietary ratios, or even counting calories. Instead, it's all about moderation and logical choices. Here are its main components:

A minimum of sweets and anything with refined sugar

A minimum of white starches (white rice, regular pasta, etc.)

Lots of fruit and vegetables

Low fat, but not no fat

Controlled portions at breakfast, lunch, and dinner

Healthy snacks in between meals to keep metabolism running high

Power Breakfast

Of all my meals, the one most optimized for maximum energy/metabolism boosting and all around good health is breakfast. On most mornings I eat a cup or so of non-fat plain organic Greek yogurt mixed with about a teaspoon of ground cinnamon, blueberries (sometimes strawberries and/or sliced banana) topped with plain (unsweetened) toasted oats. Every item performs a specific function and the result is something that's pretty yummy (unless you can't stand fat free yogurt) and gets me through the first couple hours of the day. Every so often, I'll eat something more conventional for the sake of variety, like a bowl of Product 19 cereal with non-fat milk and either blueberries, strawberries, or sliced banana. Also, about every other Saturday, I make whole wheat pancakes for the kids and will take a few for myself (without syrup, of course).

Super Salad

Every lunch and dinner starts with what I've come to call my "Super Shapiro Salad":

Romaine lettuce

Baby spinach

Carrot slices

Chopped celery

Tomatoes

Cucumber slices

Very lightly steamed broccoli

Very lightly steamed cauliflower

Avocado

A tiny amount (maybe a teaspoon, but I've never actually measured) of olive oil balsamic vinaigrette

I eat fairly large portions of this salad with both lunch and dinner so I have to spend a few nights a week making up new batches. Sometimes I feel like there's no end to the produce to wash, slice and dice, and steam every week. I should also add that since I eat so much produce now, I only use organic ingredients. Let's just say that Whole Foods Market has become one of my favorite destinations.

Lunch and Dinner Main Course

My main course for lunch is usually whatever leftover I have from the night before. I use our Tupperware collection for portion control by using the small (maybe pint size?) containers for this part of the meal. This is roughly half the amount of what I used to eat, but with the addition of the super salad, I'm fairly satisfied after meals. As for what exactly I eat, it can be just about anything, just as long as it falls within the general guidelines of my overall diet plan. Here are just some of the meals I regularly make:

I usually make these meals for the whole family, but it's not unusual for the kids to only eat certain components of each meal. They're especially resistant to sauces. Kids are weird that way.

The In-Betweeners

To keep hunger at bay and my energy/metabolism high, I eat healthy snacks throughout the day. Usually at 10:30, I'll have a salt-free brown rice cake topped with just a tiny amount of organic wildflower honey. Later, between lunch and dinner (usually around 3:30), I'll have some seedless red grapes. I also always keep a bag of unsweetened almonds on my desk and grab a few whenever hunger pangs strike. Less frequently, I'll snack on celery or carrots with humus or a handful of edamame. Sometimes I'll even treat myself to an afternoon cup of green tea. It's supposedly high in antioxidants, plus it gives me a slight energy boost during those late afternoons when I'm especially tired from a lack of sleep (often due to late night salad preparations).

I also discovered early on is that I can't have a good workout unless I eat something right before heading off to the gym. The thing I've found the most effective is a flat Oroweat whole-wheat "sandwich thin" roll with plain almond butter and a touch of honey. This always gives me the boost I need to get through the workout without crashing.

The Dark Side of Good Health

As mentioned earlier, the road to better health took a surprising turn a few months in. I had quickly hit my 20 pound weight loss goal and started working toward my stretch goal of 30 pounds, when I started experiencing some very troubling stomach pain that often came about 45 minutes after eating. The first time it happened I thought that perhaps I had some minor food poisoning. But after a few episodes, I realized this was a different type of pain. I wasn't nauseated and wasn't--well--having to do those things you'd normally do when experiencing food poisoning or the stomach flu. Instead, I was feeling a very sharp pain that was clearly centralized in my upper abdomen. It was almost like someone was constantly jabbing me in the stomach with a knife--sometimes more aggressively than other times--and these attacks became increasingly more frequent. It made my work days tough, it completely soured my mood (leaving me with zero patience for my kids' usual shenanigans), and disturbed my sleep. Obviously, the time had come for medical intervention.

Over the course of several weeks, I ended up seeing two internal medicine physicians and a GI specialist, getting an ultrasound, and having to go through a very unpleasant upper endoscopy wherein a small camera was threaded down my throat into my stomach. At the end of all this, the medical conclusion was that I either had acute gastritis (inflammation of the stomach lining) and/or gallstones. The former is somewhat treatable--albeit very slowly--via a bland diet and medication. The latter is still an open question, as they only found something that could possibly be gallstones, but could also be something else.

Consequently, for the better part of the past few months, I've been especially careful about eating anything that could case pain. There was even a week or two in there that I was eating nothing but bland foods like rice, plain tofu, and applesauce. But finally, after so much careful eating, I'm starting to feel like myself again and have slowly begun reintroducing a regular varied diet. Unfortunately, somewhere in the middle of all this, I ended up losing additional weight beyond what I was intending (at least five pounds beyond my stretch goal). The good news is that I'm still within the range of healthy weight--albeit on the bottom end.

But how exactly did this whole thing happen in the first place? My conclusion is that my nearly overnight change in eating habits in April was clearly the reason. This couldn't have been a coincidence and I've identified two highly probable dietary culprits:

1) Eating loads of unwashed quinoa2) Eliminating too much fat

First, let's talk about the quinoa. Quinoa has tons of wonderful health benefits and is especially high in protein. Early on in my new regimen, I started eating loads of the stuff. I used it in stir fries, with curries, and in lieu of pasta. However, what I didn't know at the time was that you are supposed to thoroughly wash quinoa before cooking it. The reason this is important is because quinoa is naturally coated with saponins, which is a toxic chemical compound that serves as nature's way of keeping birds from poaching seeds and grains. While saponins in small doses probably doesn't have too much of an effect on humans, I was eating significant quantities of it. Oops. I was at least a little comforted to find through my Internet research that I'm not the only one who had a reaction to quinoa/saponins. In fact, I found one person's story almost identical to mine--right down to the ultrasound and endoscopy.

Oddly, after sharing all this with the GI, I expected her to support my conclusion that excessive quinoa/saponins consumption was the source of my ills. But she was more interested in treating the symptoms than discussing root cause and looked at me like I was crazy when I mentioned saponins, a word she had never heard before. Ah, specialists.

As for the lack of fat in my diet, I also learned that making a dramatic decrease in fat consumption (especially accompanied by fairly rapid weight loss) can cause gallstones. This would actually be the most logical explanation for my issues had they actual found any obvious gallstones. The best they were able to do was find what they thought were tiny (and supposedly common) benign cysts in the gallstone region. This is somewhat troubling to say the least. Hopefully all will become clearer in January when I'm scheduled for a follow-up ultrasound. This is expected to result in one of at least four possible scenarios/conclusions:

If they find the same sized things in the same place, then what they found previously probably really are just tiny benign cysts.

If they find the same sized things in a different place, then they're small gallstones.

If they've disappeared altogether, then they actually were small gallstones and I was fortunate enough to pass them.

If they find the same things in the same place, only they're somewhat larger, then I might potentially have something worse than gallstones.

I'll take option 1 or 3. But option 2 means possibly having to get the gallbladder removed. Ouch. As for option 4, well, I'd rather not think about that.

Either way, until more clarity comes in January, I've supplemented my diet with more good fats--especially avocado, nuts, and olive oil and completely cut out quinoa. I've also been taking Protonix, a proton-pump inhibitor prescribed by my GI to reduce stomach acid in order to facilitate healing of the abdominal lining. I haven't had a severe episode in a month so hopefully these things really are helping (knock on wood).

Final Thoughts

In all, I'm glad to be exiting my 30s in a much healthier state than I entered them. I haven't been at this weight and waist size since college and I'm pleased that I'm doing something that'll hopefully help keep me around longer for Marcie and the kids. To that end, I had a comprehensive physical (including a fitness evaluation, treadmill/EKG heart test, and full chemistry panel) a couple of months ago, just before the stomach issues, and got a really good snapshot of the effectiveness of my routine. I won't bore you with the actual numbers, but let's just say that were shockingly good. After so much hard work, I was thrilled to get some concrete proof that my efforts were resulting in something beyond outward thinness.

Fingers crossed that the stomach issues will be a thing of the past and I can laugh at my mistakes. Until then, I hope this extended posting was helpful. Feel free to leave me a comment with your thoughts and questions. I'd love to hear them!

Saturday, December 04, 2010

'Tis the Season for Tim Rivers

Every year during the holiday season, I like to pay tribute to Tim Rivers, a very dear friend who left us far too early. For those you who never knew this incredibly talented and generous person, I hope you'll take the time to read the tribute I posted to my blog a few years ago.

I also strongly encourage you to check out A Tim Rivers Collection, a compilation of Tim's very impressive holiday recordings and a few other goodies. My tribute has the whole history of those recordings and how I was fortunate enough to produce a couple of them myself. The recordings feature Tim singing four-part a-cappella arrangements achieved through magic of multi-track recording technology. Even more impressive was that all the recordings were from the ‘80s/early ‘90s, meaning there was no pitch correction available and I don’t believe he even a used a click track to keep time (he certainly didn’t for our recordings).

Again, I hope you'll take a listen. You can download anything you like for free. Lots of great options for adding to your holiday music playlists! As I said when I first made his music available several years ago, I felt making these recordings available to as many people as possible was the least I could do to pay tribute to someone who had such a big impact on my life and on countless others.

July 2010: High DramaA reworking of an older piece that first appeared at this blog. Mostly written in dramatic form.

September 2010: Under the InfluenceAs a parent, you put up with a lot of unpleasantness. So you might as well take advantage of what you can. In my case, it's exposing my kids to great music and movies.

I love getting feedback and comments on these columns. So feel free to drop me a line to let me know your thoughts!

Friday, June 04, 2010

Acting Cuckoo on Yahoo!

What is it about the Web that turns decent people into disrespectful schmucks angrily bickering with strangers? No matter what the topic, if there's a "Comments" section to a page, you can almost guarantee that a virtual fight will break out before long.

One of the types of debate that invariably breaks out it of a political nature. This seems especially true of just about every news story posted by way of Yahoo!'s homepage. Whether the story is about healthy eating, car reviews, or entertainment industry news, it's almost impossible to find a single comments thread that doesn't quickly turn into petty partisan debate.

With this in mind, I thought I'd do an incredibly unscientific experiment to see how long it takes on average for most Yahoo! article comments to devolve into angry political rhetoric.

My first choice was a topic that I knew would very likely generate lots of political debate:

Though not about politics, the story does take place in Washington D.C. So I thought the comments might still get partisan pretty quickly. And yes, only three comments in, someone posted this:

"Next we'll need to teach all us english speaking idiots how to translate ebonomics into spanish,so the minorities in this country can understand us ! I'm writing this comment and I'm a liberal, but I approve this message !"

But things didn't get truly ugly until comment #11:

"If your HEART is filled with HATE, if you Hate all people of color, if you hate immigrants, if you hate a Democratically elected President, if you hate the spelling bee, YOU MUST BE A TEA PARTY, I MEAN GOP SUPPORTER!!!"

Moving away from the president and/or Washington D.C., I thought I'd try an article that I thought might be even more politically agnostic:

This story is about school districts trying out a new cost-cutting measure that happens to also improve test scores. Now here's an interesting topic, whether you're on the left or right--or so I thought. It only took until comment #4 for this to get political:

"The four-day school week must be a favorite idea of the conservatives. Save money, the poor rich boys are starving and cannot pay their taxes. We have enough dumb Americans, Palin, Limbaugh and Beck are good examples."

Okay, I admit that education is still a pretty hot political topic, even though that particular story wasn't really of any particular political ideology. But, I figured I better move off of news and get to something more frivolous:

The comments began with plenty of negative remarks about Cher's taste and it only took a few postings before people starting digging into matters of religion. But even in this extremely fluffy topic, at comment 35, it turned partisan:

"Poor Cher. Living under President G W Bush "almost killed her", or so she said. Glad she's doing better now. (Too bad the rest of us aren't!)"

Fine, so maybe Cher is a divisive figure. Who knew? I next tried to find something really innocuous:

Left or right, everyone would like their appliances to last longer, don't they? When it comes to home maintenance, we can all get along, right? Well, apparently not. It only took until comment #9 to see this:

"How long before some ignorant lib cries racism because they're showing a black women, suggesting that blacks are maids or servants to white folks? Don't laugh, you know some jack a z z will do it."

I'm guessing this comment refers to an accompanying photo that I'm not seeing when I load the page. All I see is a photo of a dishwashing machine; but maybe it's a replacement for a previous image. Either way, whether or not a previous image was problematic, the tone of this comment is practically begging to turn the comments into yet another petty debate full of knee-jerk pronouncements and recriminations.

Finally, just when I was about to lose hope that there couldn't be at least one Yahoo! posting that doesn't turn political, I came across this:

I've never seen either of the Michael Bay Transformers movies (or any Transformers movies/cartoons for that matter), but still expected this story to only attract the attention of 12 year old boys and thus avoid the murky waters of political discourse. Turns out I was right. At last, my faith in humanity has been restored . The comments stick to the fully nonpartisan topic of the relative attractiveness of a young starlet. Take this insightful little quip from "Arnoldo" (comment #6):

"this %@!*# is UGLY to %@!*#ing sick and looks like she suffering from hunger"

Or this clever commentary from "tatu" (comment #10):

"aaaaaaaaagggggggggrrrrrrrrrr she looks like she got in a fight her face is all swollen! megan y! dam u couldnt just shut ur mouth! But nnnooo miss diva thinks shes all that and a bag of chips! stupid! o well fhuket it is wht it is huh! dum ass!"

I guess all is well with the world after all. That much said, as of this writing, there are 3,133 comments on this article. After reading 20, I had to put my fingers in my ears out of fear that my brain would try to make an escape. So it's always possible that the comments get combatively political further down the line. But given the intelligent and thoughtful commentary thus far, I'd like to believe human nature is better than that.